187] THE PRICE OF WOOL 31 



plained by alleging that the price of wool was high. As a 

 matter of record, the course of prices was such as to encour- 

 age the extension of tillage rather than of pasture. 



After an examination of these price statistics it hardly 

 seems necessary to advance further objections to the ac- 

 cepted account of the enclosure movement, based as it is upon 

 the assumption that price movements in the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries were exactly opposite to those which have 

 been shown to take place. There is no reason to doubt the 

 accuracy of Rogers' figures within the limits required for 

 our purpose, and the evidence based on these figures is in 

 itself conclusive. Even without this evidence, however, 

 there is sufficient reason for rejecting the theory that changes 

 in the prices of grain and wool account for the facts of the 

 enclosure movement. For one thing, if the price of wool 

 actually did rise (in spite of the statistical evidence to the 

 contrary) and if this is actually the cause of the enclosure 

 movement, the movement should have come to an end when 

 sufficient time had elapsed for an adjustment of the wool 

 supply to the increasing demand. If the movement did not 

 come to an end within a reasonable period, there would be 

 reason for suspecting the adj^quacy of the explanation ad- 

 vanced. As a matter of fact, it is usually thought that the 

 enclosure movement did end about 1600. Much land which 

 had not been affected by the changes of the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries (it Is usually asserted) escaped enclosure 

 altogether until the need for better agriculture in the eight- 

 eenth century ushered in the so-called second enclosure 

 movement, which did not involve the conversion of tilled 

 land to pasture. This alleged check in the progress of the 

 enclosure movement is inferred from the fact that new land, 

 and even some of the land formerly withdrawn from the 

 common-fields to be converted to pasture, was being tilled. 

 This is interpreted by economic historians as evidence that 



